Two-line hybrid rice once again sets a world record
In 2013, the two-line hybrid “Y Liangyou 900” reached a yield of 988.1 kg per mu in a 100-mu demonstration, once again setting the world record for the highest yield per unit area of hybrid rice over a relatively large area.
The two-line hybrid “Y Liangyou 900” reached a yield of 988.1 kg per mu in a 100-mu demonstration.
This is an important advance achieved under the “12th Five-Year Plan” 863 Program modern agricultural technology field project “Creation and Application of Strong-Heterosis Rice Hybrids,” undertaken by the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center.
In 2011, the two-line strong-heterosis rice hybrid “Y Liangyou 2” reached a yield of 926.6 kg per mu in a 100-mu demonstration, achieving China's third-phase super rice target.
Two-line hybrid rice technology is another great innovation in China's agricultural science and technology field after the successful research of three-line hybrid rice technology. It ensured China's world-leading position in hybrid rice technology research and led the development direction of global rice heterosis utilization.
Because the three-line method is constrained by restorer-maintainer relationships, it has problems such as lack of freedom in combining parents, low utilization rate of germplasm resources, great technical difficulty and long cycles in breeding super-high-yield and high-quality hybrid combinations, and stagnant yields.
The two-line method emerged as the times required. Over more than 20 years, this technology established the basic theory of rice photoperiod-thermosensitive genic male sterile lines, practical photoperiod-thermosensitive sterile line breeding and identification technology, core seed and foundation seed production technology, and a theoretical system for super hybrid rice breeding; established a key technology system for high-yield and stable reproduction of sterile lines and safe, high-yield seed production; solved the difficulty of coordinating high yield with good quality and high yield with early maturity in hybrid rice; broke through the bottleneck in two-line hybrid japonica rice breeding and seed production technology; bred 170 practical two-line sterile lines, formulated 528 two-line hybrid rice combinations, and promoted them over large areas; achieved the first, second, and third-phase targets of China's super hybrid rice breeding; published 549 papers and 13 monographs, forming a relatively complete theoretical system of two-line hybrid rice, enriching and developing the theory of crop genetics and breeding, and making major contributions to the development of the modern crop genetics and breeding discipline; this technology has become an achievement independently created by China with complete intellectual property rights and has been listed as an important technical project for national foreign aid.
As of 2012, China had cumulatively promoted two-line hybrid rice over 499 million mu, increasing rice output by 11.099 billion kg and increasing income by 27.193 billion yuan, with promotion areas spread across 16 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions.